


what lies beyond the smoke and mirrors (i'll find you every time)

by antikytheras



Category: Saiyuki Gaiden
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Don't smoke kids, Established Relationship, M/M, but overall this is, i'm proud of it, set in the surface world, some musings on soulmates and the like, this is probably the best thing i've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 21:53:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13749957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antikytheras/pseuds/antikytheras
Summary: Kenren's not entirely irreverent.





	what lies beyond the smoke and mirrors (i'll find you every time)

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this drawing](https://twitter.com/mayo2ge/status/965971757000663040) and then the rest of the fic blew up on its own.
> 
> enjoy!

His orders had been to wake the marshal up “before the sunrise, please.”

Kenren squints at the bright, white orb hanging low in the vividly, endlessly blue sky. It looks nice against all the wild, overgrown greenery framing the doorstep of their _ryokan_. The surface world has a certain chaos to it that Kenren has always appreciated— it’s much prettier than the ornate, perfectly-planned stone buildings with their perfectly-trimmed trees and hedges and gardens that the architects Up There like to build in their spare time.

He sits by the doorway of the _ryokan_ and takes a nice, slow drag on his cigarette, savours the acrid burn weighing heavy on the desolate plains of his tongue. When he exhales the smoke in a satisfying, steady stream, it wafts into a lazy, curled cloud in front of his eyes before fading into the crisp, sweet air of the trees surrounding them.

Huh. Don’t see _that_ in Heaven. Maybe he should submit a suggestion for more green spaces in their building. Or he could just bring back a couple plants from the surface world, do some redecorating in the marshal’s office.

The thought is enough to make him snort in disbelief. Damn, his stick’s all burned out too. His idle morning relaxation turned sour, he stubs out the spent cigarette on the ashtray provided by the inn. Just when had he gotten so damned _domestic_?

His eyes trail over to where Tenpou is curled up on the floor. If the corner of his lip can’t help curling into a fond smile, well— That certainly takes care of the “who”.

The marshal is sound asleep, which is a rare occurrence in and of itself. Kenren watches the steady rise-and-fall of his chest, observes the little twitches dancing across his marshal’s face as he dreams. Tenpou doesn’t frown, doesn’t writhe, doesn’t reach out desperately for Kenren like he does when he’s having another nightmare again. And, well, when the nightmare does come—Tenpou will wake with trails of water painting his sins bright on his face and Kenren wrapped tight in his arms. Kenren will look up with a lazy, casual (reassuring) smile, then kiss him and pull away to prepare the necessary things to start their day. Tenpou will emerge from his bedroom with a clean face, an absentminded expression and nothing to show that anything had ever happened. They will not discuss what had happened. They will not discuss the dream.

And so life goes on.

But today, Tenpou is at peace with whatever haunts the back of his eyes. So Kenren chooses to disregard his superior’s order and leaves him to his well-deserved rest. Sure, the sunrise had been pretty— to die for, maybe even— but just this once he thinks he doesn’t mind getting chewed out by his marshal over his dereliction of duty. Besides, the moon’s prettier anyway.

Now that he’s got nothing to fiddle with, his fingers are starting to itch for something, but he sure as hell ain’t about to start carding his fingers through Tenpou’s (clean) hair. He’s not _that_ far gone. Instead, he picks up his pack of Ark Royal, only to find the box disappointingly light. With a groan, he crushes it (yeah, empty) and tosses that aside too.

Only to find another (opened) pack shoved into his line of sight before his own crumpled-up wad can even hit the floor.

‘You’re awake,’ Kenren remarks with a wry smile, brushing against his marshal’s warm fingers when he accepts his pack of smokes.

‘So it would seem,’ Tenpou agrees amicably. He doesn’t look like he’s about to start permanently relieving Kenren of his duties for his transgressions, so Kenren relaxes and gets to lighting the cigarette.

‘Want one?’ Kenren offers.

To his surprise, Tenpou mulls it over for a moment. ‘No,’ he decides at last. ‘Not a whole stick, at least.’

Kenren’s eyebrows shoot _way_ up. ‘Had a really good dream, huh?’

Tenpou smiles, a little hazily. ‘Something like that.’

‘They say good things are meant to be shared.’ Kenren takes the tiniest of breaths, just enough to tease out the sweet, chocolate-and-vanilla notes before pulling the cigarette from between his own lips and planting it (the cigarette, not his lips, unfortunately, but that can always come later) in between Tenpou’s.

He accepts it seamlessly. It’s been just a few months, and already they’re moving like well-oiled clockwork. They’ve gotten used to this, to each other, and Kenren’s afraid to admit that he can barely remember life before Tenpou, which seems all the more ridiculous when he looks at the marshal dressed in civilian attire, lying with back flat against the ground and his arms crossed behind his head. Kenren watches the embers burning at the tip of the cigarette and wonders if it’s blasphemous to think that it kinda looks like a joss stick. Kanzeon Bosatsu doesn’t appear in a holy swirl of clouds to smite him down, so maybe it’s okay after all.

Tenpou breathes out a sizable cloud of smoke. It drifts over to Kenren’s face, enough to just-barely make his eyes sting and pull his attention back to Tenpou’s face. ‘And where,’ he asks, amused, ‘did you hear that?’

‘Saw it on a poster at the gift shop.’

Tenpou laughs. The cigarette slips, just-barely past the point where Tenpou likes to keep it when he’s relaxing, and Kenren takes the cue to retrieve it.

It tastes just a little sweeter now, somehow. Kenren savours the Ark Royal, the way it’s meant to be smoked, careful little puffs and punches of cocoa-and-vanilla.

Then Tenpou finally speaks.

‘Why didn’t you wake me up?’

‘Hm?’

‘I came to watch the sunrise,’ Tenpou says mildly.

Kenren scoffs. ‘There’ll always be another sunrise. That seems to be how things work out down here at least. Heck, you can even watch it tomorrow. The squad hasn’t even found the monster’s _footprints_ yet. It’ll take a couple days, like you said, so we might as well enjoy our stakeout.’

‘But will you wake me up tomorrow?’

Kenren takes a long drag on his cigarette. ‘Maybe,’ is what he says at last.

Tenpou is watching him with a blank, relaxed expression. He’s long solved the mystery of why his subordinate-and-superior had the sudden urge to turn his infamous rebellious streak on him. Kenren likes it when Tenpou relaxes, when he doesn’t have to think. It’s good for him.

Ah, fuck. Domestic thoughts. Sneaky little shits.

‘I dreamt of you,’ Tenpou murmurs.

Kenren grins and pulls the hand with the cigarette away from his mouth. ‘Yeah? No wonder you’re all smiles and healthy today. Look at you, refusing _lung cancer_.’

‘I’m not that far gone,’ Tenpou protests mildly. ‘Besides, secondhand smoke is almost equally bad.’

Kenren takes a long, long drag on his cigarette and breathes out, slow and deliberate. ‘Looks like I’ll be the death of you.’

‘Yes,’ Tenpou agrees. ‘The death of me indeed.’

They sit in silence for a moment. Kenren listens to the birds chirping in the trees, the insects buzzing and clicking when their fat, heavy bodies collide with soft stems that bend and give way without ever coming close to breaking. He hears the words that are left unsaid, that were always cradled between them in the clutches of that nightmare that won’t stop coming again and again, more frequently now that they’ve both started sowing seeds in-between the ironclad machinations of whatever shadow stirs in plain sight of Heaven’s watchful, uncaring sun.

Then, further, in the distance—

There. The faintest gurgle of running water. A stream, running on-and-on until it sweeps into the vast eternity of the great unknown, to the depths of the ocean that plays puppet to the ever-changing faces of the moon.

Kenren has always liked the moon.

‘What was I doing in your dream?’ he asks.

Tenpou hums. ‘I don’t know. The memory’s slipping— You know how it is. But I remember something like… You finding me when I least wanted to be found, and I didn’t want to be found because something was incomplete and wrong and some part of my soul was missing. And it was a part that I know you love. So you shouldn’t have wanted to— no, you shouldn’t have been _able_ to accept me. But still you stayed.’

‘Huh.’ Kenren stubs out the spent cigarette. ‘Maybe I was missing something too? Though it makes sense that you’re the one who lost something, since you keep losing crap in the piles of junk in your room.’

Tenpou narrows his eyes. Oh fuck. ‘I know exactly where everything is, thank you very much.’

‘Yessir.’ Kenren has the strangest urge to salute. He quashes it resolutely.

‘Do you know about that legend?’

Kenren stares. ‘Uh. Gotta be a bit more specific, sir.’

Tenpou curls up on his side, but he chooses the side closer to Kenren so he can look up at him when he says, ‘Once, humans were perfect, single souls inhabiting two conjoined bodies. The gods feared their combined powers, which were greater than that of the single, lonely gods, and so they split humans in two and cursed the separated pairs to wander the lands forever, in search of their other halves.’

‘Yeah, sounds like the kind of shit some asshole we know would do.’

Tenpou smiles fondly at his general’s blasphemy. ‘As we know, gods are perfect, single souls inhabiting only one body. As such, we probably weren’t made for things like committed monogamy, if only by virtue of the fact that we simply do not have the basic, primal _need_ for company.’

Kenren snorts. ‘That’s bullshit. Gods can choose to stick together. In a _committed, monogamous_ relationship, if they damn well choose.’

‘So you’ve proven time and time again,’ Tenpou acknowledges blandly. ‘But what interests me is this: what I saw in my dream— It was as if someone had deliberately carved out those holes into our souls just so the remaining parts would fit together.’

Kenren finds himself carding one hand through Tenpou’s long, surprisingly soft hair. ‘Probably Kanzeon Bosatsu.’

‘Probably,’ Tenpou agrees.

The gentle, quiet lull in their conversation, coupled with the peaceful, decidedly domestic atmosphere of what has (admittedly) turned into something of a weekend getaway, prompts Kenren to softly admit, ‘The nightmare doesn’t scare me.’

Tenpou raises one perfect eyebrow. It’s not disbelief, only curiosity when he says, ‘Oh?’

‘Yeah.’

There’s a crinkling that sounds suspiciously like a cigarette pack getting absolutely destroyed in one angry-clenched fist when Tenpou casually points out, ‘You’re not the one who has to watch his lifeline burn out.’

‘Yeah, but I’m the one who goes out _first_ ,’ Kenren counters. ‘At least you know I’ll be there to pick you up when you wake up.’

Tenpou considers it. ‘And how do you know you’ll find me?’

It’s a damning question. Kenren loops a length of his hair round his finger, pulling it taut just enough that it stands out against his skin in a tight, black ring. With a faint smile, he brings his makeshift string of fate into Tenpou’s line of sight.

Kenren’s grin is sharp-and-wicked when he promises, ‘After the stunt we’re gonna pull? They’ll have to bury us _both_ in the deepest level of Hell.’

Tenpou’s answering grin is equal parts steel-and-mischief. Kenren might be falling in love all over again.

‘Are you declaring yourself my soulmate, general?’

‘Would I _dare_ do such a thing?’ Kenren fires back.

Tenpou snorts. ‘Of course you would.’

‘Then I’ll find you,’ Kenren says simply, reaching out to coax his marshal’s fingers out of their tight, clenched-fist hold on the remaining ruined cigarette sticks. Those he tosses aside, in blatant and wilful defiance of Tenpou’s protests. ‘If we work this well as so-called perfect beings, I don’t see why it’d be a surprise for us to be soulmates once we lose our godlihood.’

‘That’s not a word,’ Tenpou chides, but there’s little he can do to hide the smile creeping onto his face.

‘I’ll wake you up tomorrow,’ Kenren promises instead, ‘whether you’re having a good dream or a bad one. But you gotta watch the moon with me tonight.’

‘Why the moon?’

Kenren laughs. ‘It’s not like I can stare directly at the sun without burning my eyes out. But I can look at the moon as much as I want. Every crater, every suspiciously-animal-shaped indent— I can look at it, and I can remember what’s on it, and it’ll always be there. Yeah, it might change sometimes when an asteroid hits it or when it’s in a different phase or something, but even that change— at least it’s something I can and wanna appreciate, you know?’

Tenpou hums and says nothing for a while. Then—

‘Your metaphors are the _worst_.’

Kenren laughs harder. ‘Sorry sir.’

Later, when night falls, the moon is round and full. Kenren has prepared tea and snacks for their moon-viewing, in accordance with the surface world customs he’s read about in one of the books Tenpou had off-loaded on him in a deceptively absentminded gesture a couple weeks ago. But even with all the effort that’s gone into his moon-viewing ceremony preparation, Kenren finds himself watching Tenpou instead. He’s sneaking glances at the man he’s been _fucking_ like a kid trying to stare at his crush without getting caught. Luckily, Tenpou only finds it amusing. Endearing, even. Not that he’d ever say it.

Kenren smiles. He’ll remember everything that makes Tenpou _Tenpou_ , no matter who-or-what tries to make him forget.

Later, when he sleeps, Tenpou will not frown, will not writhe, will not reach out desperately for Kenren like he did when he had been afraid of the waking nightmare in their shared future, the way he used to be. And, well, when the nightmare does come—Tenpou will close his eyes, and, even with all their preparation, even though he’d known the day was long overdue, he will still wish he’d shared a final cigarette with his general. Kenren will find him, sometime in the future, and look down with a horrified, yet oddly _captivated_ expression, then deny this new Tenpou the death he now craves (really, always the _rebel_ ) and pull away to prepare the necessary things to sew up his intestines. Tenpou will wake up in a stranger’s bed, staring up at a stranger’s (blood) red eyes and (blood) red hair and nothing to show that anything had ever happened between them before. They will not discuss what had happened. They will not discuss their greatest rebellion, their greatest _pride_.

And so life goes on.

Later, they will watch the sun rise over a new day, and then they’ll fumble their way home.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i’ve never smoked in my life and i don’t plan to start now or ever but. like. the fact that i have to question the accuracy of my cigarette descriptions is killing me
> 
> also don't smoke kids
> 
> i need more 10k friends please be my friend on [twitter](https://twitter.com/_antikytheras) before i jump fandoms again OTL


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